How to *NOT* fail at your new year’s resolutions this time
remember — no matter how hard it seems, you can do it…
“No one’s ever achieved financial fitness with a January resolution that’s abandoned by February” — Suze Orman
It’s that time of the year again when people set goals or “resolutions” for the new year and commit to doing them — only to forget them the very next month and repeating the same process the next year.
I have done the same for years. You might have as well. There’s no shame in admitting that.
It’s only when you admit your faults and agree to work on them is when you make real progress.
Goals are pretty easy to set. Think of doing something, write that down or even plaster a motivating poster on your bedroom wall and you’re all done. No matter how unrealistic your goals might seem to be, setting them up is always the easy part — most people including you and me do it.
Yet, when it comes to “actually” achieving your goals and not giving up on them — it’s a different story. And longer it takes to achieve a goal, the harder it becomes to stay on track.
According to Statistic Brain,
About 60% Americans make new year’s resolutions, however, only around 9% succeeds in keeping up with them.
Here’s how to make sure you are among those winners,
Define your purpose
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how” — Friedrich Nietzsche
This is the first thing you should be doing if you want to be able to make it all way through.
Just because people think it’s cool to pick up a new year’s resolution doesn’t mean you should be doing the same. This is where most people go wrong.
Ask yourself why you want to do the thing you want to do for a year. Does it really have a meaningful impact on your life or the lives of people around you?
If you fail here — it’s highly unlikely you will make it through even halfway of your journey.
The main reason behind this is your enthusiasm for the resolution will generally be high during the start — thus it won’t be a problem for you to keep up with your commitment for the first 1–2 months.
But as you progress in your journey, hit obstacles on the way, your urge to continue will start diminishing — so, it’s important to have a concrete reason as to why you are doing this because the REASON will navigate you through all storms and keep you on track.
Jennie Perez-Ray, a woman from New Jersey sets a great example. She completed her master’s degree while working full-time, sacrificing time with her family and friends, because as she puts it,
“I was the first person in my family to get a degree, so it was very important to me”
Be like Jennie — define your purpose first, and then…
Plan for the near future
“A goal without a plan is just a wish” — Unknown
You have set up your goals for this year and are fully determined to make them happen this time. But have you chalked out a plan yet?
Setting a goal without having a plan on how to achieve it is like shooting an arrow in the dark — there’s no guarantee as to whether you’ll actually hit the target.
The trick here is to break down your long term goals into short term mini goals.
Plan out what you can do every day or every week for the rest of the year which will, in turn, help you achieve your original goal by the end of the year.
I have set up three different goals as of now for this year,
- Add 8 kgs of lean muscle mass with less than 10% body fat
- Read at least 15 books
- Write at least 100 articles
Thus I have broken down these larger goals into smaller ones like these,
- Making sure I workout hard 4–5 times a week with the aim of being sore the next day and eat ample amount of healthy food each day
- Making sure I read at least 1 book a month — yet, try to read more than that if my schedule permits
- Being sure to publish at least 2–3 articles each week — every week for the year
It is also very important that you don’t shoot for unrealistic goals like gaining 25 kgs in a year or reading 200 books by this December and stuff like that.
As Lisa Ordóñez, professor of Management and Organization at Eller College puts it,
“When your sights are too ambitious, they can backfire, burn you out, and actually become demotivating”
Be reasonable based on your constraints. Promise less, deliver more, but be sure to…
Keep track of your progress
“The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more” — Jonas Salk
Now that you have your plans in place, it’s time to go out there and do it.
Evaluate yourself every day or every week or every month based on your plan to see if you have lived up to your promise.
Consider this for an example — a common method of tracking progress followed and advocated by many gym trainers is to take progress photos of your body every week or so. This way you can compare them to find out whether you have made progress and how much.
Your goal doesn’t necessarily have to be fitness oriented to keep track — you can measure your progress in anything.
It’s okay to fall short of some of your mini goals as long as you get up and promise to make up for it on the next one.
If at any point you feel like quitting, which is a very natural human behavior — remind yourself why you started out in the first place. Also…
Be accountable to someone else
“Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to results” — Unknown
This is a very good trick to keep you motivated throughout your journey.
We humans seem to take stuff seriously when we realize that the stakes are high. Being accountable to yourself is risky as somewhere in between you might convince yourself to give up — very easily.
Share your goals with someone you can trust — be it your close friend, your business partner, or wife, or parents — anyone you know will hold up their end of the bargain.
Keep them in the loop of your progress and ask them to notify you when you are slacking or falling short of your target.
This feeling of commitment to someone, itself pokes you when you’re starting to drift off from your road to glory — nevertheless, if you choose to ignore that, there’s someone who will do that for you.
Famous celebrity psychologist Elizabeth Lombardo thinks the same. In her words,
“When no one is around to say anything about an incomplete task, it’s easy to push it to the next day and the next week, and so on”
She further adds,
“Putting the task out there for others to see, helps motivate us to get it done so we don’t look bad to others. Crossing things off your list is a way to save face”
Use this nifty trick to staying in course when you feel like slacking, but remember to…
Be prepared for roadblocks
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal” — Henry Ford
Life is uncertain. As you progress in your journey you might hit a lot roadblocks along the way.
How you react to them defines whether you will be successful in fulfilling your goal or not.
It’s very easy to give up on your goal when you see an obstacle in front of you — the obstacle becomes a reason to quit.
In 2009, Peter Gollwitzer, a professor of psychology at New York University, conducted an experiment on two groups of women. The groups were compared based on which group wanted to be more active.
Gollwitzer shared the same fitness information with both groups but taught the second group how to foresee obstacles in their way and find alternate solutions to get the job done.
No doubt the second group outperformed the first one. They were fully prepared for any obstacle in their way and found out an alternate solution to the task instead of abandoning it altogether.
Remember — there’s always more than one way to get a job done. If one way closes, take the other — don’t quit.
A resolution is not satisfying if it doesn’t challenge you — and change you.
If you start following this strategy you’re already better off than most people out there and as for your resolutions for this year — you’ll eventually get there by the end of this year.
Stay motivated and keep charging towards your goals.
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